‘This was hand-delivered to my electorate office sometime on the night my son and ex-wife were shot.’ Edwards’ voice shook. Barely, he recovered himself. ‘My office has a mailbox for those constituents who prefer to deliver documents in person. This was left there.’
‘Do you have any surveillance cameras, Minister?’ Harrigan asked.
‘No, unfortunately we don’t. This is the envelope it came in but there’s no information on it. There was this note too.’
The envelope and a note identical to the one received by the commissioner were sheathed in a plastic sleeve. As Edwards had said, there was nothing to identify where either had come from.
‘It’s my belief,’ Edwards continued, ‘-and this is based on experience, I have been a cabinet minister for the last five years-that this is a surveillance dossier from a British intelligence agency. You’ll note that all the pages have the British government seal in the lower right-hand corner. Before you say it could still be a fake, the nature of the information contained in that document tells me it’s almost certainly genuine. Whatever this agency is, it’s been on this man’s trail for years. My adviser will sum up the contents for you. He had the pleasure of reading it last night. It runs to several hundred pages.’
The adviser blinked exhausted eyes. ‘It’s a very detailed document. I’ve only been able to skim it so far. It tells us that Jerome Beck was born in 1946 in Dresden, in what became East Germany. Father unknown. His mother died in 1997 in Berlin. There’s no record of any other close family. He fled from East Berlin when he was eighteen. He applied for political asylum in Britain and was granted it. He’s a British citizen but he’s not based in any single country. Until he came here, his address could have been any number of different locations in Europe and Africa. He was identified as an illegal arms dealer from the 1960s onwards, working mainly in South East Asia. In the late seventies and eighties, he was attached to the South African special security forces under the apartheid regime, working mainly as an agent provocateur. In the nineties, his name was linked to an international arms-smuggling syndicate known to deal in arms sourced from the former Soviet Union. He was also questioned in relation to the murder of a Russian journalist who was investigating that syndicate. Then around 1997, about when his mother died, he disappeared for a while. In a more recent incarnation, he worked in a scientific research facility in north London. He seems to have been an administrator of some kind. By all accounts, this employment was above board. However, during that time, he was also associating with individuals who may have been involved in the illegal diamond trade out of Africa. Then about four years ago, the dossier was closed and that is the end of the information. All in all, he’s had a very comprehensive criminal career.’
‘A busy boy,’ Trevor said.
‘Very. He was a career criminal and a murderer,’ Edwards replied. In an instant transformation, his body tightened up like a clenched fist. ‘Julian’s dead just because he was in the same room as a man who was nothing but a piece of rubbish.’
‘Do you need anything, Minister?’ Harrigan asked after a short pause. ‘Can we get you some coffee?’
‘Let’s just get on with it.’
Marvin looked up from his copy. ‘Why send this to you, Minister?’
‘I assumed I was being warned off Beck. But given what’s happened since, that can hardly be the case. I’ve a question for you, Trevor. You’re the operational officer. Why do you think these murderers sent those pictures out on the net this morning?’
Harrigan watched Marvin stare coldly at his 2IC.
‘The killers’ motives are their own, Minister,’ Trevor replied. ‘From our perspective, it’s blown the investigation wide open and put it squarely in the public eye. The publicity will just keep on going. My judgement is, that’s what they wanted to achieve. Also, they couldn’t have known we’d already identified the Ice Cream Man. They were making sure we did.’
‘Had you? How did you do that?’
‘Cassatt had a unique and distinctive tattoo on his left arm. Given the state of the body, it wasn’t immediately visible. The commander here checked it on instinct.’
‘Well done,’ Edwards said.
‘You obviously knew the Ice Cream Man well, Paul,’ Marvin said.
‘It’s a very well-known tattoo,’ Harrigan said, and noticed Edwards glance quickly at Marvin, summing him up.
‘I agree with you, Trevor,’ Edwards said, ‘but I also think my son’s killers wanted us to be each other’s insurance. If you weren’t prepared to act on this information, then I certainly would be.’
‘We would always act on information of this significance, Minister,’ the commissioner responded coldly.
‘I’d expect so,’ Edwards replied. ‘Now, to get to the point. I’m not so ill informed that I don’t know my ex-wife’s business. She knew exactly who Beck was. Julian told me he was given her name by an associate in London. You need some background. It’s a complicated story and it starts with Julian. He was a troubled young man. We had joint custody but I was never there and he always lived with his mother. He had bad influences, he never finished high school. He experimented with anything he could ingest and he drank heavily. I let him down in other words. But recently he’d started to get involved in green politics. He’d joined an organisation and was working for them. It gave him a sense of purpose. I used to listen to him talk about it. He had real capacity, maybe he could have been a leader. Then just last week he told me he had something on his mind. Among other things, it had to do with your ex-Detective Cassatt.’
‘Was your ex-wife involved with Cassatt’s activities in any way?’ Harrigan asked.
‘She certainly was. It’s also true to say that Cassatt was angling to be involved in hers and Beck’s,’ Edwards replied. ‘My ex-wife’s house is very big. Julian had his own self-contained flat. Nattie didn’t always know when he was there. One day, she was entertaining Beck, Stuart Morrissey and your Ice Cream Man in her lounge room. There’s a mezzanine floor just above it. Julian had had a hard night. He’d gone up there to look at the view and recover. They were just below him, talking. He heard every word they said.’
‘You’re telling us your ex-wife and those three individuals were in business together.’
‘It’s exactly what’s in the dossier. According to Julian, they were importing diamonds. Blood diamonds, conflict diamonds, diamonds mined illegally in places like the Congo or Angola. It’s a filthy business. This meeting was about landing their first shipment. Beck had organised supply from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although he didn’t say exactly where in that nation. Nattie and Stuart said they had arrangements in place for the diamonds to be marketed here. Cassatt said-and I’m sorry to have to say this to you-he and another policeman named Jerry Freeman had organised protection for the couriers. Does anyone here know that name?’
There was a heavy silence while Edwards’ listeners stared at him.
‘The name Jerry Freeman is known to us but he’s no longer a serving police officer,’ Harrigan replied. ‘You’re saying that both he and Cassatt were involved in this diamond-smuggling scheme.’
‘That’s my information. They had people onside in both customs and the police. What they needed now was the money to make payments to those corrupt officers.’
The commissioner had gone white with shock. He sat forward so quickly he surprised the other listeners.
‘That’s a most serious allegation, Minister. I hope you have solid information to back that up. I don’t intend to have my officers’ integrity slurred on the basis of rumour.’
‘I’m only telling you what I was told. I would suggest to you that the information is solid as it stands.’
‘You should realise that Cassatt was a liar, Minister.’ Marvin spoke more sharply than was usual. ‘He could have been boasting.’
‘This is hardly my field,’ Edwards replied, ‘but at a gathering like that, how could he be lying? He’d have to deliver. Evidently he did deliver. I don’t remember any reports of your people seizing shipments of contraband diamonds in the last few months. Unless you want to correct me now.’